dayjobs for a musician: hell, or a necessary evil? September 5, 2008

i’ve really been putting off writing about dayjobs in here.  i have a secret fear that some boss will find this and realease me of my duties to their company; little ant workers like me are supposed to give the impression that they LOVE the work that they do.  and i’m good at letting my superiors think that. 

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but truth?  well… most of the time, i don’t hate it.  i’d rather be doing something else.  something more creative.   it depletes me of necessary energy (especially of my line of work, temping, where i basically have to learn a new job every week) to do other things relevant to my “other career,” aka music.  actually, this week my nights haven’t been spent doing productive venue-searches, emailing, and uploading, like a good independent musican “should,” but have been soaked in red wine, cold medicine, and csi reruns (don’t try this at home, kids!), just do drown out the stress of the day so that i can get some actual sleep.

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i always feel bad about goin m.i.a. for long periods of time from all my little sites… myspace, my blog, flickr, etc. but quite franky, my day job has been eating my soul lately. and not only have i given up on social networking in the last two weeks, i’ve also had to hold off on/ quit some little projects going on in real life, too. and that makes me sad. but i guess that’s the good thing about temping… it’s only temporary, right?

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are you a musician/ artist/ writer/ etc.? do you have a dayjob, or do you make at least some part of your living off your art? if with dayjob, do how the fuck do you handle doing both? because it’s always been really hard for me. if you do make a significant portion of $ from art, any tips for a n00b like me? (well… i’m not exactly a n00b at music, just at making a living with it.)

online strategies for chantilly 2.0 August 18, 2008

okay, so it’s really hard for me to keep up on all this social networking stuff sometimes.  i enjoy it.  i wish i could be better at it.  but i feel too overwhelmed by other things in my life to do a decent job at it.  i am a person who gets excited by projects easily, then abandons said projects when something else excites me more.  then i have a pile of 50 uncompleted projects to finish.  then i have a panic attack.  haha.

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i will also say this about myself- it’s hard for me to differentiate what is too personal to write about.  this is such a problem for me, that i fight with myself about it, and most times don’t end up writing anything for fear of leaking things i’ll later regret saying.  sometimes, what i have to say can be very scathing and bitchy. because that is just the tone of my writing if i’m in a bad mood, which is when i tend to write the most.  it’s bitten me in the ass a good number of times, the most recent incident causing me to permanently lock my personal online journal.

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also, i just tend to get discouraged with, or bored by certain sites ( like myspace), so i tend to only care about them in an on-and-off fashion.

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then i look at people like julia allison, who i’ve never heard of before i read that article, who lives her entire life online. it makes me wonder what the best strategy really is for being successful at this little online game? to be an enigma or bare it all? sure, people like to be voyeurs. and she gets attention, but people hate her for it. and shit, i’ll admit it, i’ve got a really thin skin– there’s no WAY i could take criticism like the kind she gets (i know, musician is the wrong line of work to be in if i can’t take criticism, aye?) i just want to be able to share things about myself without going to that extreme. but is it possible?

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i’ve been thinking about this lately, because as musicians, it’s up to us to find fans and keep them interested. part of that is doing things like blogging, and twitter, and all that other crap. i want to be able to just write whateverthehell i want, but i can’t. what can i say, i’ve got a dirty mind or not just that, but an angry mind… a scared mind. or just an overreactive-and-prone-to-post-when-i’m-emotional mind. aside from the dirty part, i’m not sure these are the best things to try and reel people in with. and i’m not sure unflattering character flaws are the best things for random people to know about other random people, anyway.

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still, there’s always that urge to want to blab everything about onesself, even if it makes us feel vulnerable… then inevitably delete/ edit/ lock what was written out of embarassment. it’s what i always do.
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in conclusion, i don’t know what the anwer is. i guess it’s different for each one of us.